The Ghost Who Waited
by CE Winters
Summary: Eighteen years ago, the Doctor said one thing to Tate Langdon before vanishing: "I'll come back for you." Now that there's trouble in the Murder House and Tate isn't the same boy he had left, how can he honor that promise? Doctor Who/AHS/Supernatural


A new body was a new start. The Doctor knew that there were countless humans in the universe that would give anything for a new body in which they could start a new life. The Doctor himself had been given such an opportunity eleven times now, and yet he knew that he could never truly start over. He had a different body and a different voice, but he would always be the Doctor, and he would always remember.

People came and went, like he was a phase they had to go through to grow, but he always remained. Sometimes they even forgot, like Donna, but the Doctor still remembered. Even if he never saw them again, he remembered every face.

That was why when the phone he'd kept from Martha suddenly buzzed, the Doctor decided to pick it up. "Hello! The Doctor here! Ooh, new voice. Ah, I like it! Nice and soothing, eh? Ah, yes, Doctor, and you are…?"

Laughter came from the other end of the phone line. "I had wondered when you showed up in the bar and didn't say a word if it was the end. But then again, it's never really the end for us, is it, Doctor?"

The corners of his mouth curled upward slowly, his new muscles adjusting to the action, as he heard the familiar voice. "No. No, it's isn't," he agreed. It was true. Of many of his companions, Jack was the one with whom he shared the most similarities. No one else would ever _really_ be able to understand the weight of virtual immortality…an infinite possibility of living years and no plan with which to fill them beyond what comes moment to moment. "But, Jack, I take it you didn't call me to reminisce. It's a bit soon for that."

"True enough," said Captain Jack. He let out another chuckle, but this time it seemed strained. "I got this number from the lovely Martha Jones. I didn't know who else to call."

"Don't tell me it's a problem too big for Torchwood," the Doctor said slowly, his interest captured.

"Only a bit outside our realm," Jack replied, "and not quite to do with extraterrestrials."

"I'm listening," the Doctor said, reclining back in a chair and kicking his feet up on one of the TARDIS's control panels. "What problem could possibly be too big for our 51st century man?"

Jack laughed shortly. "Like I said, it isn't something I seen often. After you left, I went on a brief sojourn across the Atlantic. I ended up in Los Angeles."

"Ooh, Los Angeles, the City of Angels! Funny story about how it got that nickname –"

"_Doctor_!"

"Right, sorry. Carry on."

"There's this place…they call it the Murder House." As Jack spoke, the Doctor slowly lifted his feet and took them off the control panel. He stared across the TARDIS at the wall opposite him, listening intently. "You wouldn't _believe_ the shit that's gone on there over the last hundred years. It isn't human, Doctor. Five people in the last five years alone have died, and that's not to mention the entire mystique surrounding the circumstances."

"It isn't human but it isn't extraterrestrial, so you say." The Doctor paused. "You have an idea of what it _is_ Jack. I know you do."

"I checked it out six ways from Sunday. It's not an alien doing this."

"And?"

"And," Jack said slowly. "What else is there?"

"You tell me, hmm," the Doctor pressed. He and Jack worked mostly with aliens, it was true, but both of them knew that there were more things threatening humanity than that. When Jack has stated the name of the place, it had rung between the Doctor's ears. He knew of that house. He'd been there before. He'd met someone, promised something, and the Doctor always remembered. He just hadn't expected to return so soon.

"Supernatural," Jack whispered. "I don't know, it's…it's haunted. The house is haunted. That's what I think." A grin grew on the Doctor's face in light of Jack's final commitment to an intimidating resolution that was far out of their area of expertise. "Whatever it is, Doctor, it's been killing people long enough."

"I'm going there right now," the Doctor said, hopping off of his seat and setting his destination.

"Aye, sir," Jack said. The Doctor could practically see the man's formal salute, followed by a cocksure wink.

"Oh and Jack?" The Doctor asked before his old companion disconnected.

"Doctor?"

"Thank you." A short laugh followed the Doctor's unexpected gratitude before Jack replied and disconnected.

The Doctor slipped the phone back into a pocket and held on as his new legs tried to withstand the motion of the TARDIS as it zoomed to the Murder House.

The Doctor exited the TARDIS slowly, eyes taking in the large house. The last time he had been there was in 1992, and the boy whom he had met had been young, too young to accompany him, though he had begged to. He would be a man now, old enough to venture through time and space as they pleased. That was, if he still desired to. A new body was a new start, and this would be the Doctor's.

There were no cars in the driveway, as the Doctor saw upon walking around the outside of the house once, and presumably no one home, as he deduced after knocking on the door. Never one to leave without exhausting all options, he circled around to a side door. A few seconds and one sonic screwdriver later, the lock opened and the Doctor walked into what he knew was the basement of the house.

It was the same place he had met Tate Langdon more than fifteen years ago. Tate had been a teenager then, full of conflict and darkness, and the Doctor had promised to come back for him when he was ready.

"Tate?" The Doctor called cautiously as he crept through the large basement. "Tate, are you here?" Presumably, if the boy – now a man – was there he'd have answered the door, but a force was compelling the Doctor to persist. Jack said that there had been five deaths in the house in the past five years, which was only a fraction of the time he had been away. The chances that Tate Langdon still lived in the house were slim to none, but he had to know.

"What are you doing in this house?" A sharp voice spoke out of the shadows.

The Doctor turned on his heel and peered into the darkness. A smile grew on his face when he spotted a mop of blonde hair. It was the same one Tate had when he was young. "I'm back! Ah, oh yes. I look a bit different then the last time you met me – new face, and all that." The figure in the shadows hesitantly stepped into the light, and the smile on the Doctor's face slowly slipped away to be replaced by a look of momentary puzzlement. "You, on the other hand, have the same face…exactly the same face." He took a step forward to inspect Tate closer. "You can't have aged a year."

"I haven't." Tate's voice was as young as it had been the day the Doctor met him. His eyes, dark enough to look almost black, watched the Doctor suspiciously. Suddenly, his face switched from suspicion, to recognition, to denial. "No," he said slowly. "Doctor?"

"In the flesh," the Doctor said with a flourish, sweeping his arms out to the side.

Upon hearing the common saying, Tate scoffed and looked away. "In the flesh," he repeated. "What do you want?"

"I made a promise," the Doctor said, taking a step closer. "A colleague of mine called me. He was concerned about the things that have been happening in this house. Tate, do you still live here?" Tate didn't answer. "Five deaths in less than that many years, he said. So I suppose the only thing left to ask about them is _why_?"

Once again, Tate remained silent, his gaze fixed on a point off to the Doctor's right. "It's been fifteen years," the Doctor said contemplatively. "Yet you remain the same as you were the day I met you."

"_No_," Tate said sharply. "Not the same. You have no idea." He turned on his heel and began to pace agitatedly through the room. This time, the Doctor was the one who remained quiet. "You _left_ me here," Tate continued angrily, "and I waited. I waited so long – _years_. I went through _shit_ waiting for you…waiting for someone to take me away from this fuck-hole of a house. I sat at a dinner table with the bastard that killed my brother and started screwing my mom. I _waited_."

The Doctor shook his head. "I couldn't have taken you, Tate. You were a boy, and you had so much…anger. You still do. I had to wait until you were ready."

Abruptly, Tate stopped pacing and whirled to face the Doctor head-on. If the Doctor was shocked to see his dark eyes brimming with tears, he didn't let on. "That's shit. I needed something to make me _good_. None of this would have happened if you hadn't sent me away – if you hadn't told me to wait and then never came back."

The Doctor's brows drew together slightly. "The murders?" he asked.

Tate laughed humorlessly and shook his head. "The Doctor," he said. "Last of the Time Lords you told me, when we met. You said that even if you were all alone, one person could still change the world." Tate shook his head. "Not anymore."

"Tate…?"

The tears that had been brimming in the blonde's eyes suddenly poured over, spilling down his cheeks. "Too late, Doctor," he said, sounding like the child he had been the last time they met. "I waited until I couldn't wait any longer."

The Doctor tried for a neutral expression as he surveyed the boy in front of him, for it was now apparent that he was indeed a boy, as he had been for years. "How did it happen?" he asked quietly.

"Alone and scared," Tate responded, "even though I didn't look it. I acted like a perverted little jerk-off. I _am_ a perverted jerk-off." He paused and heaved a large sniff. His eyes were rimmed with red, and tears and other fluids ran down his face unchecked. "I killed fifteen students at my high school. I shot them all, right in front of me. I kept thinking about what you had said…that one person could change the world. You weren't right. It's a filthy world we live in. It's a filthy, goddamn helpless world. The only thing I could do was end mine and take out some other bastards at the same time. I was killed by a half dozen machine guns, in 1994."

The Doctor let out a sigh and fought the urge to bury his head in his hands. "The TARDIS has never had a ghost in it before," he started.

"Don't you get it, you stupid fuck?" Tate shouted angrily. "_I'm a fucking ghost_. I died here, and I can't leave. The house keeps me here. It keeps all of us here."

"All of us?" The Doctor asked. "The people who've died…or the ones that killed them?"

Slowly, Tate's mouth pressed into a grimace. "Both. You think I did them in," he observed. "I've changed."

The confirmation of his crimes made the Doctor let out a sigh of disappointment. "Tate, if you'd have waited…"

"I'd be thirty and long gone from this fucking place. You would never have found me again. I tried to wait. I tried." Tate swallowed thickly and shut his eyes. "Fuck you," he said weakly, his sentence broken by a sob. "You said when you came back…w-we could go anywhere I wanted, any _time_ I wanted, on one condition…"

"It had to be amazing," the Doctor finished quietly. "I did say that." Most humans, the Doctor knew, would use the moment to say _I'm sorry_. They wouldn't quite know what they were sorry for – living while he was dead perhaps, or for not coming back sooner. But the Doctor knew too much and had lived too long to even feel the desire to express the sentiment.

Tate wasn't so different from the extraterrestrials the Doctor had to defend the Earth from. He was confused, frightened, and altogether too much to fit in this world that he couldn't ever belong to. All of time and space at his fingertips would have been perfect for Tate. The Doctor knew that. It was why he had told Tate he would come back in the first place. If things had gone differently, they would have set out skyward together. Every inch away from Earth would have been an inch that fixed Tate more and more. But the world was an imperfect place, and the Doctor also knew that.

Tate had killed people. He didn't know how many, but even one would have been enough. There was only one thing left to do, and he didn't like it. "Where are you going?" Tate asked frantically as the Doctor turned to the door.

"Is it the house you can't leave, or the grounds?" The Doctor asked.

"The grounds," Tate answered.

The Doctor tilted his head and smiled. "Then follow me." Tate stepped toward him hesitantly, and the Doctor led him out of the house and up to the TARDIS, which sat just outside. He unlocked the door and cracked it open. "It's too late for you to come with me now…but maybe this can do a thing toward making it up." He nodded at the door, signaling for Tate to open it.

Slowly, Tate's hand reached out and opened the door the rest of the way. The Doctor just glimpsed the look of wonder that crossed his face upon seeing what was inside before Tate stepped into the police box. A moment later, like so many people before him, Tate ran out again and checked all sides of the box before poking his head inside once more. "It's bigger on the inside," he said quietly. "This is your time machine."

"Love it when they say that," the Doctor murmured. "She's the TARDIS – time and relative dimension in space."

Tate nodded, a sad smile appearing on his face, and then backed out until he stood on the ground. "Is this goodbye?" he asked, eyes wide. "Forever?"

The Doctor felt a sudden unexpected pang echo through his chest. Tate might have killed people – he _had_ – but he was still just a boy. In light of the Doctor's own age, he felt that difference even more. "It's goodbye," he said somberly.

"I _have_ changed," Tate insisted, tears returning to his eyes. "There was a girl, Violet. I would have never done all of that stuff if I'd met her before. It was the house. You believe me, Doctor, don't you?"

The Doctor smiled sadly. He approached Tate and put a hand on his shoulder. "I've never seen anything like you, Tate Langdon, then or now. It's beautiful, how life can go on _without_ life. You live, you think, you feel, you _are_." He tightened his grip on Tate's shoulder briefly before letting go. "I wish things had been different."

With a parting look, Tate stepped away and the Doctor closed the TARDIS's door. Briefly, he leaned his head against the wood and took several deep breaths. The best way to avoid both a lie and the truth at the same time was to answer another question entirely, and that was what he had done.

The Doctor was not happy with what he had to do. After Tate had shown what he was and before he had revealed that he could never leave, the Doctor still had hope. He could have taken Tate's ghost with him. It was obvious that Tate was still conflicted, and that his conflict was what brought on his darkness. But now, any hope there was had gone. The boy-ghost was stuck in that house, haunting it, and he'd killed more people than the Doctor had cared to ask. Another family would move to that house if there wasn't one living there already, and who knew how many other ghosts there were, or what Tate might do to them. He couldn't let it happen, but it also wasn't his area of expertise.

The Doctor located a phone number that he told himself he would only resort to as a last option. It had been Jack who gave it to him, which made the Doctor wonder why he hadn't called it directly. The men on the other side of that phone number were stark opposites of the Doctor. They saw corruption and vileness where he saw beauty and uniqueness. They saw danger where he saw misunderstanding. They had a predisposition for violence where the Doctor abhorred it. Jack also usually had a tendency to lean toward actions rather than words. With hope, the Doctor thought that the captain might have called him first because that was changing. Unfortunately, there was no hope in this situation, and the Doctor's heart sunk with what he was about to do.

He took the TARDIS phone and dialed the number, which was picked up on the third ring. "Hello? Who is this? How do you have this number?"

"Dean Winchester?"

"Who's asking?"

"This is the Doctor."

A pause, and then, "Doctor," in a strange tone. Dean had to have known that he would only be getting this call if something was serious which accounted for the tone, but the word in Dean's mouth made the Doctor want to giggle absurdly. The last time he had encountered the Winchester brothers, it had been to track down a clan of shape shifters that turned out to be a group of ostracized extra-terrestrials left behind by their people. The Doctor had invited the boys to sleep in the TARDIS in lieu of their normal sketchy hotel, and Dean had brought along a small portable television. The Doctor had walked in on him watching some absurd American soap opera called _Dr. Sexy, M.D.,_ and had proceeded to laugh for the rest of their mission whenever Dean had addressed him as "Doctor".

"It's been a while since we've seen each other," the Doctor said once he had fought back his insane urge to laugh. "I'm, ah…calling because a friend of mine alerted me to something strange happening over here in your area."

"If this _friend_ is Jack Harkness, man, you've got to tell that dude to stop calling me when he's drunk and telling me that he knows I'm, and I quote, 'as straight as a bendy ruler that just needs to find its perfect piece of paper'. Cas picked up my phone once and thought I had a call from a gay phone sex hotline."

The Doctor made a choking sound half between laughter and a cough. "Right, well, that sounds like an issue between you and your jealous angel, but I'll pass on the word. In the meantime," the Doctor continued, cutting off Dean's protest claiming his possession of eradicable heterosexuality. "The Murder House, Los Angeles, looks like it's exactly the sort of thing you and your brother…take care of." The Doctor paused. "I wouldn't be calling you if there was any hope at all here…if I thought that things could change."

"I've heard that one before," Dean said. "What sort of monster is it?" Dean's voice grew muffled, and the Doctor assumed he was talking to his brother when he said, "L.A., the Murder House…just Google it, dude."

"A ghost," the Doctor answered when Dean stopped talking. "Probably more than one, but the one I'm referring to…" The Doctor closed his eyes and swallowed. "He's a teenager. He's killed at least several people in death, more than that in life. I've met him before, when he was alive. He's a…different kind of kid. Not bad, just different. He doesn't understand the world and people don't understand him."

"So you say," Dean said. "I don't know, man. But I guess after that Apocalypse shit, all shades of grey are possible. But you know, just one person would have been enough for us to ice him."

"I know," the Doctor said dryly.

"Sammy pulled up the online bio," Dean said. "Damn, it's all here, everything about the place. It usually isn't that easy. Holy _shit_…I can't believe half the stuff that's gone on in that hosue. We'll get on the road as soon as possible."

"Dean?" The Doctor asked. "How much pain do spirits suffer after you and your brother…'ice' them?"

"It's over in a matter of seconds," Dean said. "As for the other side, I don't know where they go, even now. It's got to be better than this filthy, goddamn helpless world. We can only hope."

The Doctor's mouth opened in a small gape as he heard Dean Winchester say the exact same words Tate Langdon had said only half an hour before. "Don't relish it," the Doctor advised. "Life is always preferable to death. If there were anything else I could do, I would. Good luck, Dean." The Doctor ended the call feeling sick to his stomach. In a matter of days, Tate Langdon and whatever other ghosts resided in the Murder House would have been sent on, wherever on was. The Doctor could only hope that it was indeed a better place than the one they had left. He could only hope that Tate Langdon, the ghost who waited, would finally know freedom after the Winchesters paid him a visit. He could only hope that the boy would get his opportunity to traverse time and space after all.


End file.
